The magazine’s “Governor’s Cup” award is based on how many new corporate development projects a state lands in a given year. Projects must involve a capital investment of $1 million or higher; the creation of 50 or more jobs; and/or an expansion of at least 20,000 square feet.

Metropolitan areas were also ranked. Site Selection’s editor, Mark Arend, says this helps fire up investor interest in certain regions or states:

"Both Cincinnati and Columbus ranked in the ‘Top 10’, so that says that those metro areas are considered attractive," says Arend. "And rankings like these would hopefully trigger renewed interest in a city, it would cause the reader to wonder why are so many projects going to Cincinnati or Columbus or to Ohio.”

Dayton and Youngstown also fared well for their metro size, ranking #7 and #8 for areas with populations between 200,000 to 1 million. For Wooster, it was ranked #1 for cities in rural areas.

Some aren’t completely sold on the Site Selection rankings, though. Ken Mayland is President of Clearview Economics, a consulting firm in Independence. He says there’s a little piece of good news in the survey for Ohio, but…

“It’s only measuring the new acquisitions and the new expansions of businesses. Kinda looking at the one piece of the picture, and not the whole picture,” says Mayland.

In other words, there’s no data on payroll, and how many companies may have shuttered or lost workforce during 2013.

Among the top investments in Ohio made during 2013, Kinder Morgan Inc. committed $500 million to a new natural gas processing plant in Newport.